Next Friday, Bjoern Habegger is allowed to drive the new Mercedes-Maybach in Beverly Hills for the first time. Before his driving report we want to try to sort the newest noble Mercedes in brand, market and history.
Why the first new Maybach from 2002 was a misunderstanding and why the chances of the newest Maybach based on the S-Class are significantly larger, there are reasons. In Germany, the average super-rich in terms of age is more in the "best years", socialized with German cars and can certainly do something with the name Maybach.
In China it is the other way round: The super-rich there, for whom the new Maybach is to be made into Quengelware, is more than 30 May what? Didn't even know him 12 years ago. One simply has to show Asian money nobility what there is to show - and what has to be shown. The best thing is a work of art from design and technology. In 2015 and in the dress of the S-Class, the new Mercedes-Maybach was self-explanatory. THAT is the difference between Maybach old and Maybach new.
What is the new one Mercedes-Maybach? Just a kind of pretty S-Class or a worthy bearer of a big name? Here the question may help: What would Ferdinand Piëch have done? No man has more octane in his blood than the car-obsessed technician who first made Porsche big in racing, then Audi and finally Volkswagen. Piëch would have done it differently than Mercedes and Maybach.
Listen! For many years, rumors have been circulating in the automobile press as to whether Audi might revive its original name Horch. In 1988, shortly before the Audi V8 initiated by Ferdinand Piëch, it was specifically considered to present the large Audi as a Horch. As we know, the first V8 from Ingolstadt was born as an Audi. There were reasons for the cancellation of the Horch name. The name was largely unknown.
And Maybach?
20 years after the non-Horch, the Audi V8, Daimler decided a second edition of the Maybach. In the meantime the brand was dead for exactly 60 years. The last Maybach 1.0 was built 1942. The then DaimlerChrysler AG had determined that in the market of the noblest automobiles beside Rolls Royce or Bentley still place was. Piëch would probably have advised on good Austrian rather this: "Build on new 600er".
To give the legendary state car 600 (W 100) a befitting successor would have made sense in terms of brand politics. In the sixties "the" 600er was an overachiever, with a never again achieved image of the technology carrier. The 600er had no buzzing electric motors for windows or sunroof. Everything hissed silently, hydraulically. Incidentally, you could hang out with the big Mercedes sometimes just a sports car.
Maybach lacked technology
When the reanimated Maybach came onto the market in 2002, the car stood on an extended floor pan of the blessed W 140, the Helmut Kohl S-Class, which had been off the market since 1998 - just like the Chancellor of the unit. After all, Maybach inherited the electronic components from its living brother, the W 220 - including the tachograph. The oversized speedometer in particular was simply too reminiscent of the S-Class. Three years later, the W 220 also disappeared - including the speedometer. In 2005 and with the then new S-Class (W 221) Maybach was finally old fashioned - technologically the opposite of the historical reference Mercedes 600!
Initially, a V16 engine was planned exclusively for Maybach. Trial units were already running. Supposedly too expensive, as the motor press called it at the time. Piëch would have done it! Bet that … ? How "a few" million marks would this motorization, which had a major impact on Asia image, cost more? Deprived of this opportunity, the Maybach was basically a baroque angel with no characteristics, dressed in a two-color look, often combined with black and heavy Bordeaux. The potential customer was happy to be shown historical pictures of the pre-war Maybach: also black, with coach bodies.
For comparison, the competitor Rolls-Royce Phantom 2003 a predominantly painted wall in the airstream. In the middle a true chrome temple. In addition, small loopholes (illuminated). The Bentley Mulsanne (2009), however, coined huge round lights as borrowed from anti-aircraft anti-aircraft guns around Britain 1941. Bentley and Rolls-Royce showed character. Lack of technology, design and negotiable history Maybach failed. At the end, in the year 2012, Daimler has, according to the automobile journalist Georg Kacher in the British "Car Magazine ”330.000 euros with every Maybach sold set in the sand.
Maybach 2015
Daimler is taking a different approach with the new Mercedes-Maybach. The Piëch path. But. The new Maybach is based on the hypermodern technology carrier S-Class. Just as Ferdinand Piëch from the Audi 100 first made the Audi 200 and later the V8, Daimler limits itself to the evolution of the best car in the world. All the strengths of the S-Class, above all comfort, are further enhanced.
To gain space for the courted customers in the rear (plus 20 centimeters) come even nobler materials. Plane and quiet chrome rims give the car character. "Magic Body Control" also turns the Maybach version of the S-Class into a flying carpet. The window of the rear door cuts straight off, the small triangular window moves into the C-pillar. The result is a true Maybächle, as the Swabian would say.
PS .: That with the 16 cylinder for the Maybach would not have let a Ferdinand Piëch rest. Piëch, 1972 Incidentally, inventor of the legendary Mercedes five-cylinder diesel ("hung on cylinders"), the 16 cylinder later, as you know, has given itself. In the Bugatti.